On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 09:57:02AM +0000, Ben Finney wrote:
> Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> writes:
>
> > On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 09:26:12AM +0000, Ben Finney wrote:
> > > So it's already the case that they have a certain number of places
> > > to look, *including* the Debian BTS if the work is packaged for
> > > Debian. I don't see that this proposal changes that.
> >
> > That's why the proposal is bad. It doesn't improve that, and it
> > requires more work from the maintainer. Lose/lose situation.
>
> As I understand it, the proposal is to put *new* information (that
> Debian source diverges, and exactly why) into an existing location
> that is already a place we expect upstream to know about (the Debian
> BTS) and that all Debian package maintainers are already expected to
> know how to use.
But it's NOT ABOUT Debian package maintainers.
> That seems like an improvement on putting that information in a *new*
> place, that historically is not a place where all Debian package
> maintainers can be expected to use, and expecting that upstream will
> look there.
More administrivia is never an improvement. See (yeah I know it's
always about the glibc, but well … that's a very good example for the
discussion) in the glibc we have
debian/patches/$arch/$state-$subject.patches. For $state in
{submitted,local,cvs}. submitted means its sent upstream, local means
that it's not, cvs that it's a cherry-pick from upstream. Why on earth
would we need to write that in _yet another place_ ?
What Joey's proposal is:
* put more burden on the maintainers that already report patch
upstream ;
* doesn't change a thing for the one who don't ;
* has very few advantages for people that already did that work in
their source package in a decent enough way (like the glibc does):
the sole advantage I see is that it's predictable where to find the
information. But when you want to check a package you have to
`apt-get source` it anyways, and if debian/patches is sorted
properly, then you'll see that in an obvious way before even
launching your browser to look at the BTS.
As a summary, I see a big-lose/no-win-no-lose/ridiculous-win situation,
which sum up as quite-big-lose.
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@debian.org
OOO http://www.madism.org
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